Fans of “The Lone Gunmen,” “The X-Files,” and some show on AMC filled Irvine Auditorium last night to hear from Vince Gilligan, the creator/writer/director/producer of “Breaking Bad.” Here’s what we learned:

Gilligan finds writing for TV “much more satisfying” than movies. On a TV series, the writer has a stronger voice throughout the process and knows that what he’s working on will actually enter production. That’s often not the case in movies.

“Star Wars changed my life.” It’s what made Gilligan interested in the movie business. Another early influence: “The Twilight Zone,” which he still watches when marathons run on New Year’s Day — despite owning the full series on Blu-ray.

After working with Bryan Cranston on an episode of “The X-Files” — Gilligan wrote for the show for seven years — he vowed to “write something for this guy in the future.”

His years on “The X-Files” also informed the episode structure of “Breaking Bad”: teaser, title, four acts, and plenty of non-linear scenes. “I just stole that whole-cloth from ‘The X-Files.’”

At the beginning, he didn’t have an overarching vision of where “Breaking Bad” might go, aside from one goal: to take the good guy and turn him into a bad guy.

TV is often “a land of permanent stasis” for its characters. There are rarely consequences, and plot lines disappear from one episode to the next. Gilligan set out to make a show specifically about change and consequences.

In creating tough situations for their characters to wriggle out of, Gilligan and the other writers often painted themselves into corners, too. The toughest jam came in season three (episode title: “Sunset”) when DEA agent Hank is outside Walt and Jesse’s R.V., about to pry open the door and find them both inside. Walt comes up with a solution, but the writers were at their most panicked finding it. “The reason Walter White is a genius is because it took seven of us the better part of a week to come up with something he thought of in eight minutes.”

Gilligan knew nothing about cooking meth when he wrote the show’s pilot. His solution? “I just googled ‘meth.’” He later brought on a University of Oklahoma chemistry professor and a DEA chemist to help fact-check Walt’s process.

“Walter is dying of cancer, but he also is a cancer himself on his family.”

Gilligan had the most empathy for Jesse, Walter Junior and Hank, but “I feel bad for all of them — even Walt.”

While he claimed in an interview that “Better Call Saul,” the “Breaking Bad” spin-off due out in November, would be “75 percent comedy and 25 percent drama,” he and the writers are now five episodes in and he’s realized that’s not true. It’s much darker than that. Also, since the show is set pre-”Breaking Bad,” “anyone could show up at any time.”